Leagues and Governing Bodies

Professional Cricketers' Association CEO Angus Porter said that "players remain frustrated at the lack of opportunities to play in the Indian Premier League," according to Richard Hobson of the LONDON TIMES. Porter said that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) "must get to grips with the reality of the IPL or face threats to the English season." Only two of the England squad in India, Kevin Pietersen and Eoin Morgan, "are due to return for the lucrative event in April." The '13 tournament runs from April 3-May 26, and England players must be home for at least one first-class match before the start of the Test series against New Zealand on May 16. Terms of central contracts agreed for '11-13 "are being renegotiated" to last for at least three years from October. Participation in the IPL "will be a sensitive area for discussion." One leading agent with players in India said that "lengthening the period of availability will form part of the talks." Porter said, "Players are not militant to the point where they will contemplate industrial action, but it is something the authorities have to get to grips with" (LONDON TIMES, 11/13).

German UEFA exec committee member Theo Zwanziger said that "UEFA is going ahead with a proposal for a Euro 2020 tournament hosted by half a dozen countries and not the usual one or two," according to Karolos Grohmann of REUTERS. Zwanziger, who was formerly head of the German Football Federation (DFB), said that "the plan, still to be ratified by the UEFA exec committee, envisaged 12 countries hosting the expanded tournament, which will feature 24 teams, up from the current 16." Zwanziger said that "the plan foresees 12 countries hosting matches, with the countries chosen as seeded nations based on their UEFA ranking at the time, and whether they have qualified for the competition." The BILD newspaper reported that "if Germany qualified for the tournament they would play their group games at Berlin's Olympic stadium." UEFA President Michel Platini's idea "will be discussed by the exec board in December, with a decision made early next year" (REUTERS, 11/13).

TERM LIMITS: The AP reported a FIFA working group began talks that "could result in age and term limits" for world football leaders and change how World Cup hosts are chosen. FIFA said that a 10-point proposal "will be sent to national federations by the panel of chief execs and legal directors from FIFA and its six continental confederations." The FIFA Congress of 209 members "is scheduled to meet in May and vote on ongoing reforms promised by President Sepp Blatter after a series of bribery and bidding scandals." Proposals under discussion "include an age limit of 72 for FIFA election candidates and a two-term, eight-year limit for the president." All of FIFA's members likely "will be asked to choose future World Cup hosts instead of the FIFA exec committee" (AP, 11/12).

World Anti-Doping Agency Dir General David Howman said that "the fight against doping is suffering because of a lack of funding," according to Owen Slot of the LONDON TIMES. Howman said, "With $25-30M [of funding] a year, WADA’s budget is less than some European footballers earn." He added, "The [Lance] Armstrong affair especially has shown that we’re dealing with a more and more highly developed process, a real conspiracy, with unwarranted pressures on teams." Of greatest concern was his reflection that "WADA isn’t in a position to tackle this type of sophisticated cheating." Howman made his point by noting that "WADA has not been able to hire new staff since '04, and suggested that if redundancies were required to keep WADA afloat, then its ability to catch up with the cheats in sport would be severely curtailed" (LONDON TIMES, 11/13). CYCLINGNEWS.com's Daniel Benson reported that while Howman "is aware of the financial constraints WADA finds itself in, he would still like to see the agency have a greater mandate in the future." Howman said, "We ought to have the power to enquiry ourselves. The second part of that is that if we have that ability then we can do something with the information. We'll have that process and the sanction process. It's a two-part system that we don't have now" (CYCLINGNEWS.com, 11/13). The AFP reported that "one way that the industry had helped so far was by making available to WADA samples of certain medications not yet available to the wider public to help develop tests more quickly and effectively when they are adapted for illegal use in sport." IOC President Jacques Rogge said, "The fight against doping is too big for a single organisation to tackle on its own." GlaxoSmithKline Senior VP Philip Thomson said that "the company was working on three new medicines and had provided samples from one to WADA to be tested" (AFP, 11/12).

Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen Managing Dir Wolfgang Holzhäuser said that "the German Football League (DFL) should use its additional income of €216M ($274M) a year from the sale of Bundesliga TV rights for other sports and organizations," according to the SID. Holzhäuser said the additional income should not be "distributed with a watering can using the current distribution method" to the DFL clubs. Holzhäuser said, "I could imagine using part of the money in the fight against doping." His concrete plan is to increase the support of Germany's National Anti-Doping Agency. The DFL will receive €628M ($797M) annually instead of currently €412M ($523M) a year from the sale of its TV rights starting in '13-14 (SID, 11/13).

Japan Football League champion V-Varen Nagasaki President Tomoyuki Miyata announced that the club has been admitted into the J.League's second division, J2. The promotion forced J2 bottom club Machida Zelvia out of the J.League after just one season (KYODO, 11/13). ... Tennis is "looking at whether it can adopt measures pioneered by cycling to weed out drug cheats." Int'l Tennis Federation anti-doping Manager Stuart Miller said that the ITF is "working hard to do more blood and out-of-competition tests on players" (AP, 11/13).